Decades after Los Angeles stuck a straw into Mono Lake, economist John Loomis set out to discover if this policy really was in the state's best interest.

Loomis, then a professor at the University of California, Davis, asked random Californians in 1987 how much they would pay to make the unique lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada whole once more - how much they valued the birds, the fish, the mere knowledge that a place such as Mono Lake existed.

That value, he found, was $1.5 billion per year.

The cost of Los Angeles finding another, more expensive source of water? About $26 million per year...Read more.

This Sunday marks the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The tsunami destruction and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown have garnered the most attention.

There was also another cause of suffering in Japan's quake zone. In some places, you couldn't get gasoline for weeks to fuel cars and generators. The Pacific Northwest is prone to the same kind of earthquake that rocked Japan. Emergency planners say this region's fuel supply lines are vulnerable...Read and hear more.